Someday, the SEC may boldly declare that it’s moving to a nine-game league football schedule. That’s a day that surely would make most fans happy, for so many reasons.

Not likely for 2013 yet, though, it seems.

SEC athletic directors discussed scheduling issues on Wednesday in Nashville and, according to a Birmingham News report, may yet be months away from determining what to do beyond the coming season.

Even with the additions of Missouri and Texas A&M that brought SEC membership to 14 schools, the number of league games will remain at eight for 2012, with each team playing all six divisional opponents and only two cross-divisional foes.

Only two SEC ADs—Tennessee’s Dave Hart and Georgia’s Greg McGarity—have publicly expressed the opinion that the league should consider a move to nine games. There is believed to be much opposition among the ranks to that option.

The question is: Why?

Would nine SEC games be too much of a good thing? Of course not.

Would the imbalance of some teams having four league home games while others have five throw Earth off its axis? No. Each season would be a little quirky that way, but the 4-5 advantages would alternate each year and, over time, things would even out for everyone involved.

Besides, the SEC schedule already is inherently flawed or else hypothetical team A (um, Georgia) wouldn’t get to miss hypothetical superpowers B and C (yeah, Alabama and LSU) en route to a hypothetical (East) division title.

Would it be harder for an SEC team to win a national championship with nine league games? Probably a little. But not in all cases. Wouldn’t it be easier than ever for a one- or two-loss SEC team to jump the Oklahoma States of the world in the late-season BCS standings (or whatever rankings are used to determine an eventual mini-playoff field)?

We won’t go that far here—not yet—in hopes the schools will, in fact, eventually agree to let their league schedules expand hand-in-hand with their league membership. Perhaps as soon as 2013, though, any time would be a good time.

There are too many storied rivalries, too many only-in-the-SEC traditions, to preserve and nurture for these ADs not to go to nine. There’s too much regional—and national—interest in the best football conference in the land. Heck, there’s too much money to make in television revenue alone.

As we’ve learned from years and years of BCS negotiations, decisions big and small, bad and good, tend to take a whole lot of time in college football. This particular matter won’t move along any differently.